Judge Denies Bail to Three Charged in Prison Case

By ABBY GOODNOUGH; Terry Aguayo contributed reporting for this article from Miami.

Published: June 23, 2006

A federal judge on Thursday ordered three guards charged in a prison sex ring here held without bail, but released two others until their August trial because he did not consider them dangerous or likely to flee.

A sixth guard charged in the scandal, Ralph Hill, 43, died Wednesday in a shootout with federal agents who had come to arrest the men as they left their shifts at the Florida Correctional Institution. A federal agent, William Sentner, 44, was also killed in the early morning gun battle.

The guards were indicted this week on charges of giving contraband to female inmates in exchange for sex, as well as bribing and threatening them to keep silent. Robert Davis, a government prosecutor, said Thursday that the contraband included alcohol, food, money and marijuana.

Magistrate Judge William C. Sherrill Jr., of the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Florida, ordered Alfred Barnes, Gregory Dixon and Alan Moore held without bail. They will be held in an undisclosed location, and -- at their lawyers' request -- the judge said they would be isolated from other inmates.

Mr. Davis said that Mr. Dixon and Mr. Moore tried to evade arrest after the shootings, and that Mr. Dixon ignored a federal agent's order to get out of his car, and that he tried to drive away. Mr. Dixon's lawyer, Timothy Jansen, said his client simply had not understood what was going on. That was not enough to persuade the judge to free Mr. Dixon, who is accused of trading contraband for sex with four inmates.

Judge Sherrill ordered Mr. Barnes held without bail because he ''appeared more substantially involved'' in the alleged conspiracy than his co-defendants. Mr. Davis said the government had recordings of telephone calls he made implicating Mr. Barnes, and other incriminating evidence.

The judge said the two others, Vincent Johnson and E. Lavon Spence, could go free until trial, but ordered them put under curfew and said they must wear electronic monitoring devices part of the time. None of the five guards can have any contact with inmates at the prison or their relatives, or with employees of the prison, Judge Sherrill said.

A trial for all five has been set for Aug. 21.

About two dozen relatives and friends of the guards attended the detention hearing, including wives, children, siblings, parents and pastors. Their lawyers said the guards all had deep roots in the community, had worked many years at the prison without incident, and had served in the military. None had criminal records except Mr. Barnes, who was convicted of cruelty to animals four years ago after withholding food and water from his pit bulls.

''If there's a remarkable similarity,'' Judge Sherrill said of the men, ''it's that each and every one of them has a large number of favorable factors.''

He singled out Mr. Johnson, the only guard not accused of having sex with inmates, for praise after the man's lawyer, Robert Morris, said he had triggered an alarm just after the shooting, helped staunch the bleeding of an injured prison lieutenant and provided cover for a federal agent in the line of fire.

Mr. Morris said his client was leaving the prison complex with Mr. Hill when the confrontation took place. A prison lieutenant injured in the shootout -- whose identity still was not released Thursday -- was leaving with them, Mr. Morris said.

There was little mention of Mr. Hill during the hearing, partly because lawyers for the other guards said it would be prejudicial to discuss a fatal shooting that none of Mr. Hill's co-defendants had anything to do with. But Mr. Davis, the government lawyer, said a DNA sample that Mr. Hill had provided under court order early this year matched a semen sample provided by one inmate.

''Beyond complying with a mandate of this court,'' Mr. Davis said, ''he did nothing to cooperate with this investigation.''

Records show that Mr. Hill worked in Miami as a corrections officer and owned a house there before moving to Tallahassee, that he filed for bankruptcy in 2001, and that his license to carry a concealed weapon expired in 1999. Mr. Davis said the government would seek a superseding indictment, potentially adding ''a number of substantial charges.'' As it stands, the five guards are each charged with one felony count of conspiracy, witness tampering, mail fraud and interstate transportation in aid of racketeering.

The charges carry maximum sentences of 20 years in prison.

Armando Garcia, a lawyer for Mr. Barnes, asked why his client should be held based on ''disgraceful, scandalous, scurrilous allegations'' with no evidence introduced at the hearing to back them up.

But Mr. Davis said it was crucial to keep the guards away from the prison, so they could not intimidate inmates out of testifying against them.

''They are highly vulnerable,'' Mr. Davis said of the inmates. ''They are subject to threats and coercion by the defendants and other unindicted co-conspirators.''

Photo: Special Agent William Sentner, shown in a photograph from his family. (Photo by Orlando Sentinel, via Associated Press)